On 6 May, news broke that the details of 270,000 service personnel working for the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) had been accessed. It was part of a cyber-espionage operation targeting a contractor responsible for managing the MOD’s payroll system.
In a statement to parliament, the UK’s defence secretary Grant Shapps said that the data breach was suspected to be the work of a malign actor and state involvement could not be ruled out.
Although the government did not officially attribute this data breach, many MPs pointed fingers at China, recalling its track record in cyber espionage – a significant and long-standing issue for many Western countries.
